Amdo

Amdo (Tibetan: ཨ་མདོ་, Wylie: a mdo [ʔam˥˥.to˥˥]; Chinese: 安多; pinyin: Ānduō) is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being Ü-Tsang (Central Tibet) in the west and Kham in the east. Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu (Yellow River) to the Drichu (Yangtze). It is mostly coterminous with China's present-day Qinghai province, but also includes small portions of Sichuan and Gansu provinces.

Amdo was a part of the Tibetan Empire until the 9th century and later a local Tibetan theocracy called Tsongkha until the 12th century. A priest and patron relationship began in 1253 after a Tibetan Buddhist priest, Phagspa, visited Mongol leader Kublai Khan and entered his service.^[1] From the 14th century to the 16th century, the Ming Dynasty controlled some border areas within today's Xining, Xunhua and Hualong. The Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty seized control of Amdo in the 1720s after wars with Khoshut leader Lobdzan Dandzin. From the mid-18th century, Amdo was administered by a series of local Tibetan rulers who were associated with the government located in Ü-Tsang through monastery systems, and Dalai Lama's Ganden Podrang has not directly governed Amdo since that time.^[2] Local Tibetan rulers were often in some kind of alliance with or under the titular authority of a larger, more powerful non-Tibetan regime such as the Mongols and the Qing.^[3] From 1917 the Hui Muslim warlords of the Ma Family, which supported the Republic of China (ROC), began occupying parts of Amdo, which was gradually incorporated into ROC provinces. Since 1949, Chinese Communist Party forces have been able to defeat both Tibetan and the Nationalist Government forces, solidifying their hold on the area roughly by 1958.

Amdo is the home of many important Tibetan Buddhism spiritual leaders, lamas, monks, nuns, and scholars, including the 14th Dalai Lama, the 10th Panchen Lama Choekyi Gyaltsen, and the great Gelug school reformer Je Tsongkhapa.